Climate Change Denial Fund Managers

This is a little late but last week at a meeting of Council pension funds (LAPFF), Catherine Howarth of Fair Pensions gave a presentation on their recent survey about the importance of climate change to large investment fund managers. See the actual report here.

There was a lot of interesting stuff in what she said. Fair Pension's actual conclusion is that climate change is not given the importance it deserves due to lack of client demand, short termism and the low price of carbon. But what I found fascinating is that 11% of these major fund managers did not consider climate change to be an important investment issue. In fact they considered it as either unimportant or very unimportant. 11% also do not engage with companies about the risks and opportunities of climate change. This is a significant chunk of our fund managers who have £6 trillion of asserts under their control made up of predominantly ordinary workers pension and insurance funds.

This "climate change denial" argument is sheer madness. Maybe only 11% of major funds take this view but we are talking about the big boys and girls of the investment fund world. Nor should we forget that only 39 of the top 100 managers bothered to reply to the survey (despite being requested to do so by many of their clients). So the figure of 11% is in all probability far too small and not truly representative about the scale of the problem.

So, what we have is at least a tenth (probably significantly more) of the biggest fund managers in this country are in effect climate change deniers. While some may argue about the actual threat posed by climate change surely nobody can deny that it will change the investment landscape whether you like it or not and that our economy and many companies are being shaped by this agenda.

Lets at least try and change things by the very simple act of increasing client demand (by pension funds) over our fund managers by asking questions and adding to the pressure for them to take the issue seriously and take meaningful action over climate change.

Give the Bill Some Balls

Excellent clip posted on YouTube by UNISON Young members on the Climate Change Bill after their conference in Glasgow early this month.

Despite my youthful good looks obviously many will be surprised that I am no longer eligible to be a UNISON young member. But the future of the union seems in good hands.

There are 75,000 young members in UNISON (out of 1.4 million). They think that the Climate Change Bill currently going through Parliament is a good thing but want the government to be bolder and increase the target for the reductions in emissions from 60 to 80% by 2050.

The target should also include air and shipping interests.

They ask for this link to be passed on to MP’s, friends, relatives and work colleagues.

Check out also I Count - Stop Climate Chaos

I noticed in the clip top London regional Young member convener Sarah Lewis and NEC member James Anthony